The disclosure relates generally to flexible and in-line register comparison for bug analysis.
In general, microprocessors have become extremely complicated. In turn, contemporary validation and testing methods for these microprocessors have increased in complexity. Unfortunately, as complexity increases, the contemporary validation and testing methods lose speed, lose reliability, and include more errors.
For instance, a contemporary validation and testing method is to generate and provide an instruction set for a test case to a machine. Any error or failure in processing the instruction set is not observed until the machine provides an output. Unfortunately, the output is only generated when the machine encounters an interrupt. Thus, errors or failures that occur with respect to earlier instructions can be masked by the processing of a later instruction. In this way, as the number of instructions in the instruction set increases (e.g., as the testing method increases in complexity), the probability of errors or failures being masked increases (e.g., reliability is lost).